Every time you talk to someone, you spend the rest of the day thinking about it. They give you a short answer and you think they hate you. They don't text back fast enough and you start freaking out. You are looking for reasons to think people don't like you. The last 4 years of my life, I've apologized for I think everything. Like just saying sorry constantly. Someone would bump into me when they could have just gone around me while I was standing still and I'd say sorry.

I would have my own opinions and strong beliefs about something and I'd backtrack like, "But I don't know, maybe I'm wrong." I would text someone and if they didn't respond in like I I don't know, an hour, I'd convince myself they hated me. And the craziest part is I didn't realize I was doing it or it was even a problem to begin with. I just thought that's how everyone was. Like, everyone worries what people think. Uh, everyone replays conversations in their head at 2:00 a.m.

But then I remember this one time I was probably 16 or 17 and I posted something on Instagram and I had a couple followers uh from this school, a lot of people from a new school that I moved to.

In about a day, no one liked that photo and it was so embarrassing and I just felt like, wow, I thought I knew these people. I took that to heart. I thought maybe, you know, these people really don't care about me. Uh, they must hate me. Maybe I said something to a couple people to make them mad and I don't know, maybe they just don't like me anymore. So, I spent the weekend just like torturing myself. Like 2 days I was convinced that these people who I barely even talked to, like I barely talk to these people were judging me or just, you know, didn't care. They didn't like my stuff. I didn't realize it then, but I realize it now that that was a serious problem. And it definitely started when I was younger. Don't exactly know when, but it had to be elementary. You I wasn't the loudest kid or like the most popular, but I was friendly with everyone. And I think that's because I was terrified of anyone not liking me. I would change how I acted depending on who I was around. If I was with one group of friends, I'd act another way. You know, there's group A, group B, group C. I was just kind of adapting to whatever I thought people wanted from me. And for a while, it worked. Middle school definitely worked. People liked me.

I had friends. I fit in. But the problem was I had no idea who I actually was. Like if you asked me what my actual opinions were on anything at that point, I probably couldn't tell you. Or I probably could, but it wouldn't be my own opinions. It'd be whatever group I'm with. Because my opinions were just whatever the people around me thought. And I didn't realize how exhausting it was going to be trying to keep up with it. Because when you're constantly performing, you're like a jester, constantly monitoring yourself, worrying about how you're going to be perceived or looked at.

Your brain just never shuts off. Like, you can't relax. You can't be present in the moment. You can't be chill. I remember being with like a group of friends, going to their house, and you know, every interaction I had with them, I was very, you know, I was analyzing everything. Someone would laugh at something I said and I would spend like 10 minutes trying to figure out if they were laughing with me or at me. I had to constantly be aware of how I was coming across people. And the thing that made it worse, right, is that I was good at hiding it. Like it sounds somewhat emo, but like on the outside I seemed fine, like confident even, but inside, dude, I was thinking about a lot. just constantly second guessing everything cuz there was a lot of people that I would talk to and I was basically just performing. And so the worst part about caring too much is that you start losing yourself. And I don't mean that in like a deep philosophical way. I mean like literally you forget who you are. Because when you spend all the time trying to be what other people want, you stop knowing what you want. You stop having your own opinions, your own style, your own interest. And that was the biggest thing ever in high school. Like I had no according to some people you I had no style. I had to be like them and another group had to be like them.

Not like had to but you know I wore shorts and a hoodie like all the time and it would definitely be like picked at. But I realistically did not want to dress like the people I hanged out with because it it not my style. I'll say not my style and I'm glad I didn't get dragged into that. But with me and a lot of people you become this kind of blank slate that molds itself to whoever you're around. Like I'm not a mean person, but I would be mean to specific people if my friends were being mean to these specific people. But then when I'm not with that group, I'm a pretty nice guy. And I started noticing this when I'd make decisions, too. Like I would try to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. And I realized I had no idea what I actually wanted because every decision I made was based on what other people would think. Like I remember thinking about what to major in. And my thought process wasn't, you know, what do I want to do? It was what looks good, what looks impressive, what would, you know, my friends think is not lame, not weird. And so I would end up choosing something I didn't even care about because it sounded good when I told people, but it really doesn't matter cuz I didn't go to college anyway. But it wasn't just with college. It was even jobs, hobbies. Nothing was based on what I wanted. It was all designed to get approval. And the thing is, the people whose approval I was chasing didn't even care. I was stressing about impressing people who probably didn't remember or don't remember my name.

But, you know, I convinced myself that everyone was watching. Everyone was judging. Everyone cared when the reality is that most people uh are too busy worrying about themselves. And right now, I currently am too busy worrying about myself. I do not care really about other people. I don't care what they do, what they say. I'm still in the process of trying to figure out what I want to do. And apparently I also became a people pleaser, which I'll be honest, at the beginning, I swear it sounded pretty good. I I thought that was a good thing. It's actually horrible. It's actually very bad because when you're a people pleaser, you say yes to everything, even when you don't want to. Even when it hurts you, because saying no feels impossible. I would have friends ask me to do stuff and I'd say yeah, even if I was like exhausted, even if I had other plans, even if I genuinely didn't want to go or didn't want to do whatever it is, because I couldn't handle the thought of disappointing people. And at first, people kind of like that about me. At least I think like I was the reliable friend, the one who was always down, you know, the one who never caused problems, the one that never said no. But over time, uh, I realized people were kind of taking advantage of it. Like they would, like they knew I'd say yes, so they keep asking and I'd keep saying yes and I'd keep burning myself out. It could have been anything. I hated specific people. And when they ask me for test answers and I had them for myself, but you know what happened? I'd give them, you know, my little my little paper and they never gave it back to me. And they kept sharing it to all their other friends. And no one gave it back to me. And that happened a lot with a lot of other things. Homework, any class assignments, you can name it. Anything. At the time, I had Snapchat. Everyone added me just to kind of get my answers. That's it. But in my head, saying no meant they wouldn't like me anymore. And I have no idea why I cared. And I think the turning point had to be probably like a year and a half ago, but I was with my quote unquote friends at like a a fair because I know like one of them, but since you know I was so nice, I considered everybody my friend and that's like 14 15 people when really one of them is like my really close friend. Everyone was talking to each other, you know, cracking jokes that were very insidelike. I had no idea what they were talking about because they have their own lives. Like I knew these people, but I wasn't I I wasn't friends with them, you know? I wasn't as close as I thought apparently in my head. I don't know what I was thinking, but you know, but it just happens when you're so nice. So, I had like $200 that night. Well, after I had $5, I played a game. I played one game and yeah, I suck at throwing stuff, so I missed. It was like pins. Missed horribly. I was like, "Ah, whatever." Cuz it was like $15 a game.

insane. After not talking to me for like 30 minutes, everyone asked me, "Can I play a game?

Can I play? Can I play?" Uh, I said, "Yeah." Then after the fact, you know, everyone's done playing their games. I don't think anyone thanked me at all. I'm starting to think about it. No one thanked me. We walked around more and there was uh it was lemonade and apparently, you know, it was pretty good lemonade. I say apparently because I didn't get to try any. Some person asked me, "Hey, can I have some uh money to get some lemonade?" I said, "Sure." And it was like $7. Then the next person asked me, then the next. And I said yes to every single person. And then when I had five bucks left, I couldn't even get my own lemonade. So what did I do? Nothing. I did nothing. But like those 15 people, eight asked me, you know, "Hey, can I have some money?" And then only my close friend said thank you. So I went home, looked at my wallet, saw my $5 cuz the 200 I had was like hard work money. But it was me helping someone. That's how I got the money. And that was like two days of work. Wasted. Completely wasted on people that I do not give a about. But then later that night, I got a screenshot from my friend uh from a group chat and it was all them, the people that you know asked for money basically saying that they played me like a fiddle. So I turned my phone off, I started playing Siege and and my brain started moving, you know, the cog started turning and after that day I started trying to say no. But not even would just know even impressing people or apologizing for things that aren't my fault. And it was hard.

It was way harder than I thought it would be. The first thing I did was I started noticing when I was doing it. Like every time I caught myself overthinking something or worrying about someone's thought, I would just not well I would try just to not care. But since, you know, I'm a people pleaser, I had to take that extra step and ask myself like, does this actually matter? Does this person matter? Does this person's opinion actually affect my life? And I'll tell you, most of the time the answer is no. I'd be stressing about some random person I barely know. And from there, I started saying no. Like at first, I felt kind of sick, very anxious. I was very anxious about it because like my brain was convinced something bad was going to happen. But nothing happened.

Most people, I say most because some people do care if you say no. But most, they don't really care, especially if they don't know who you are. They just ask someone else. Like, I made the rule for myself to only say sorry if I actually did something wrong. Or I was in like the shoulder of a walkway when everything's open and someone like hits my shoulder, like slams it. Oh, yeah. Sorry, dude. What? No. Or like just because I had an opinion. like I had to physically stop myself from saying sorry or taking back something I said cuz I did that a lot. And you know slowly things would start to change. And the first thing you'd notice is that some people won't like the new version of you. Like the people who were used to me saying yes, always going along with things or whatever it is, they didn't like that I was, you know, standing up for myself.

Basically standing up for myself. Yeah. Like they didn't like that I wouldn't go along with their jokes. And it really shows who actually cares about you because the people who stuck around were the people who liked me for me, not what I did for them. I also started making like way better decisions. Like I'd stop choosing things based on how they looked and start choosing things based on what I actually wanted. Me being able to chill out definitely got easier because I constantly didn't really care what I said or did. I wasn't replaying conversations in my head. I wasn't worried about every little thing and I started being myself like the actual version of me not the performative you know jester basically because when I moved to this new school I was trying to stand out very hard too much because when I started doing that my grades dude they slipped they were getting bad. I graduated with a pretty good GPA but freshman year horrible horrible horrible.

But after graduating high school, uh, a lot of people, surprisingly, no one talked to me except like maybe 10 people out of a lot of people that I would talk to that I thought were my friends. And that's just kind of what happens when you're so nice and you consider everyone friends. Like even at work, you know, oh, I talked to this person once and they were nice to me. That's my friend.

Uh, no, they're not. That's a co-orker just being nice. That's that's that's really it.

And most of you guys are probably in school, so in class, if someone just talks to you once, they're not your friend. You can try to be friends with them, but just know it's not a guarantee.

But, uh, anyway, I used to care a lot, you know, way too much. I hope you guys learn something about me being an idiot and being a people pleaser. It's been a while since I posted, and I'm very sorry about it. I've been so busy, unbelievably busy. But dude, videos have been doing amazing. Like they've been doing so good. Like every comment I get is just it it's nice.

It's sweet. Like all you guys are nice. And I just wanted to thank all the new people that subscribed and and you know hopefully stay. And if you just got this video and you're watching it, please subscribe. I want to reach 100K by the end of this year. That's like it's a lot, but you know, it's it's worth a shot. And if you want to further support me, I have a buy me a coffee link in the description. And I hope you guys are having a great day and I will see you guys very soon. Bye.